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Shawn Smiles Miller - CISM Athlete

For those of you that don't know that some of our own Navy Tridents are pretty decent at triathlon. Three of our members, Shawn, Emilie and Beth have all made the Military CISM developmental triathlon team. I met up with Shawn over lunch to go over my triathlon season for 2017 and garner any tips and tricks to improve my running.

I have not been swimming enough each week but hoping to get back to 3 times a week. I have been using trainer road that I can hop on the bike after the girls go to bed. Feeling better about swimming and a lot stronger on the bike. I needed help with running and loosing 15 lbs.

Shawn graciously agreed and we met at the Stadacona track. I recently showed him this video:

He explained that this video was one of the best running break down videos he ever saw. He also mentioned that there is not one way to run. Depending on how you run, and your bio mechanics and mobility; you may have more of a chance of injury depending on that running style. Otherwise, his advise was stay away from completely running on your toes and heel strikes. Anywhere in between is likely fine. He mentioned he knows lots of great CISM athletes that run both ways.

His advice was try not to switch up too much at once. I said I want to have a faster 5 and 10 km time. I feel like I can shave 10-12 minutes off my run times. That would allow me to go from 25 mins to 20 mins and 50 mins to 40 mins in both sprint and olympic races.

So try to land mid-stride and just work on speed work once or twice a week. Sounds easier said than done. He talked about once you get your baseline on 200, 400, 800 and 1000m times, try to go as hard as you can for speed work so at least zone 4 or 5 for each of the sprints and give yourself 2 to 3 times to rest completely and recharge before the next effort and go as hard as you can. So during the speed workout that day, I hit 7 x 400m sprint with almost 3 minutes of zone 1 running to catch my breath. He then said next time you do speed work, attempt 200m sprints and aim to hit 15-17 efforts to slightly increase your zone 4 work slightly.

He also gave some insider tips about being good at sprints and olympic distances. To podium you have to be pretty good at each sport. His secret is he is pretty decent at swimming and not bad at cycling. Where he excels, is at the end of that speedy effort, to transition to running and be able to put it in 5th gear and run fast right away. While others take 5-10 minutes to get out the lactic acid and transition to using other muscles.

The point of this post is that we have some excellent triathletes within our awesome group of 30 triathletes and our club has been known to take those new to the sport through their goals and are always supportive along the way. This took 30 minutes of his day and it left me motivated for the upcoming race season.

Thanks to Shawn for meeting up with me and posing for this goofy picture. Thanks to all the tridents out there Kim G, Patrick L, Shawn, Steve E and Beth who have taken time out of their day to help me over the last two years and get better at this sport. Although it is an individual sport and effort there is something about the strength of your club.

Before I handed over Treasurer to Steve Goes, I asked the club what they wanted to do with some of club funds. One of the most prominent ideas was to pick a race and aim to get as many club members committed as possible. I would like to take it to the next level, we should aim to stay at a Cottage the night before and after the race to spend some time and socialize as a club. The tri-lobster(summer side, PEI), Aylesford, Bridgetown triathlons might be some great ideas. What you do you guys think? Leave a comment and let me know. I can raise the idea and set up a sub-committee to work on this effort and ask for club funds to pay for the cottage rental.

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